Monday, November 14, 2005

In 1961, Newton Minow, then chair of the Federal Communications Commission,famously decried television programming at the time as a "vast wasteland."Many citizens including area educators, religious groups, communityorganizations, and unions agreed and complained that our TV stations wereconsistently ignoring local issues.

In 1962, the FCC responded to these concerns by convening a landmark seriesof hearings in Chicago to determine if television stations were fulfillingtheir legal obligations to serve the public interest.

While the hearings didn't forge any key policy changes, they did reaffirmthe FCC's commitment to require TV broadcasters to reflect communityconcerns and showcase community voices in at least some programming.

After more than four decades of rampant commercialism and lax FCC oversight,television today is much worse than it was in the early 1960s.

Exhibit A: Chicago TV stations' horribly inadequate coverage of nonfederalelections in 2004. The Center for Media and Public Affairs, a media researchgroup, found that the five highest-rated TV stations in the Chicago marketdevoted less than 8 percent of their newscasts to election coverage in themonth before Election Day 2004.

Some 66 percent of that coverage dealt exclusively with the presidentialcampaign, while less than 1 percent covered state legislative races. Thismirrors a pattern in local media across the country; the Lear Center's localnews archive at the University of Southern California studied 11 mediamarkets during this same time and found that a given half-hour of local newsaveraged a mere 2.4 minutes devoted to local electoral coverage.

Exhibit B: Chicago's TV stations consistently ignore news about andperspectives from communities of color. Chicago's population is 37 percentAfrican-American and 26 percent Latino, yet no person of color hosts anylocally-produced public affairs shows on the city's English-languagestations. A study of the guests appearing on one flagship news show foundthat more than 79 percent of guests were white, only 12 percent were AfricanAmerican, and less than 3 percent were Latino. Multiple studies also confirmthat local TV news coverage of predominately African-American and Latinoneighborhoods in Chicago overwhelmingly focus on crime and socialdysfunction and exclude all other topics.

Clearly, another FCC investigation into the inadequacies of television islong overdue.Fortunately, media reform activists may provide a glimpse of hope. TVbroadcasters must renew their broadcast licenses every eight years, at whichtime citizens can file objections with the FCC. All of the TV licenses inthe state are up for renewal in 2005, and the growing media reform movementhas seized on this opportunity to force broadcasters to pay attention totheir concerns.

On November 1, Chicago Media Action -- the city's leading media reform group-- petitioned the FCC to deny the license renewals of nine English-languageTV stations in Chicago. The petition pointed to the paucity of TV coverageof local elections as its basis for complaint.

At the same time, Third Coast Press, a Chicago-based community newspaper andweb-site, filed its own petition asking the FCC to revoke the licenses ofnearly 20 Chicago-area stations. Their filing addressed a number ofconcerns, including scant and dismissive news coverage of antiwar protestsand increasing violence against women on TV.

The FCC should take these petitions seriously. The performance of thestations in question has been deplorable and their license renewalapplications should be closely scrutinized. Moreover, the problems withIllinois' TV broadcasters are symptomatic of the shortcomings of Americantelevision in general. Acting on the complaints raised by media reformgroups would send a powerful message to TV stations around the country.

If the FCC accepts either or both of these petitions, the license renewalapplications of the affected stations would be subject to a hearing.Ultimately, the issues raised in these petitions deserve to be discussed inan open and public forum so that area residents can finally weigh in on thedismal service they receive from their TV outlets.

Forty-three years have elapsed since those 1962 hearings and the public hasbeen forced to endure a continuing "vast wasteland" with nary an oasis insight. It is high time citizens were given a chance to talk back to their TVsets again.------------------------------------------------------------------------------Macek is an assistant professor of speech communication at North CentralCollege. Szczepanczyk is an organizer with Chicago Media Action and afrequent contributor to assorted Chicago-area independent media efforts inprint, web, radio and television.------------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright (C) 2005 by the Illinois Editorial Forum. Letters should be sentto the Forum, P.O. Box 82, Springfield, IL 62705-0082 11/05

Washington, DC -- On Tuesday, November 1st, lawyers for media reform group Chicago Media Action (CMA) filed a formal petition with the Federal Communication Commission requesting that it deny the pending license renewal applications of nine Chicago television stations. The petition charges that the stations in question -- WBBM, WMAQ, WLS, WGN, WCIU, WFLD, WCPX, WSNS and WPWR -- fell far short of their obligations to serve the public interest by failing to provide adequate coverage of local and state elections during the 2004 campaign.

Under the terms of their licenses, television broadcasters are required to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity. Stations must renew their licenses every eight years, at which time citizens can file objections with the FCC. All of the television licenses in the state of Illinois are up for renewal this year. If the FCC grants CMA's petition, the license renewals for the nine stations would be subject to a hearing, at least part of which would be held in or near Chicago.

Chicago Media Action's petition cites a study of locally produced news programming conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs in support of its claims about the lack coverage of local elections in 2004. Based on a systematic review of all news and public affairs programming aired by the five highest-rated stations in the Chicago media market, the CMPA study found that just 7.8 percent of the station's newscasts during the last month of the 2004 campaign focused on elections. Some 79 percent of that election reporting dealt exclusively with the Presidential and Senate races. By contrast, U.S. House races accounted for just four percent of the stations' election coverage and Illinois House races accounted for less than one percent.

CMA's lawyer, Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Washington, DC-based public interest law firm Media Access Project, remarked, "The FCC has repeatedly affirmed the importance of broadcasters' service to the local community. It's impossible to reconcile this emphasis on localism with the paucity of local election coverage available to Chicago voters."

"These broadcasters get to use the public airwaves for free and rake in millions of dollars every year in advertising revenue," explained CMA board member Mitchell Szczepanczyk. "The least they can do in return is provide us with the news and information we need as citizens. Yet television news in Chicago consistently ignores state and local politics. Last year, for instance, WGN-TV did not air a single story about the many hotly contested races for the Illinois State Legislature. It's a disgrace. They simply don't deserve to stay on the air."

The document filed by CMA was not the only complaint the FCC received this week against Chicago's television outlets. Also on Tuesday, Third Coast Press, a Chicago-based community newspaper and website, submitted a "petition to deny" of its own one that challenged the license renewal applications of the city's commercial television stations as well as public broadcasters WTTW and WYCC on the grounds that, among other things, the stations' news programming marginalized the voices of anti-war activists in the lea—up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

ABOUT CHICAGO MEDIA ACTION. Chicago Media Action (CMA) is a Chicago area-group dedicated to analyzing and broadening Chicago's major media and to building Chicago s independent media. In 2004, CMA issued a widely-covered study of bias on WTTW's nightly news show, "Chicago Tonight." For more information about CMA, visit www.chicagomediaaction.org